Finding Cass
by PrincessPenelliotTheBrave
Summary: Cass goes missing. Jack and Aly are told not to leave the Karai Institute but it isn't like they're actually going to listen. Bit of Jack/Cass.
1. Old Woman

Chapter One:

I noticed an old woman approaching me silently out of the corner of my eye.

"Jack. We need to talk about Cassius," she said shortly.

I laughed nervously and felt my face get hot.

"Oh, Cass?" I asked.

"Is there something between you two?" She asked. "Because why else would you giggle when your friend is missing.

I started spluttering.

"I-I– What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"Did you not know he was missing, perhaps?" The old woman prodded.

"No, I knew," I said quietly. "I just don't like thinking about it. Bhegad won't let us go after him yet, so there isn't really anything I can do anyway. Even Aly has given up."

I realized I was staring at the ground, but I didn't look up because I felt tears at the corners of my eyes.

The old lady's response surprised me.

"Do you need someone to tell you what you can and can't do?" She asked.

I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

"Do you?" She asked insistently.

"No," I gasped.

"Then go get Aly and find your friend. I'll cover until you're gone."

I just stood there.

"What, did you not hear me?" She asked, annoyed.

"I don't even know your name. How can I trust you?"

She smiled. "Knowing someone's name doesn't mean they can be trusted." And with that she disappeared.

I stood there, my mouth gaping open.

"ALY!" I called as I ran across the field.


	2. Thinking

Chapter Two:

By the time I reached her I was out of breath and couldn't get a single word out.

Aly looked up at me in surprise, closing the book she was reading.

"Is something wrong? Jack, are you okay?" She asked me in concern.

I leaned against a wall next to me; one of the buildings that circled the field of the Karai Institute.

"I'm–" I gasped. "Just… a minute." I managed.

Aly looked like she was about to run off to Professor Beghad, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me as I slid down the wall into a sitting position. I tried not to notice the way her cheeks flushed.

"There was a crazy lady," I told her after I stopped breathing so heavily. "She talked to me, and then she disappeared."

Aly looked at me as if I had grown a third eye.

"Jack, people don't disappear."

I watched her think for a moment before she said what I was thinking myself.

"Unless she had the loculus." Aly looked at me curiously.

"That's why I ran here so fast!" I exclaimed. "Do you think she could have stolen it?"

Aly was silent. She propped her head against her hand and stared at the ground.

"I don't think she was part of the KI because I've never seen her before, but she knew my name." I continued.

Aly looked up at me.

"What did she tell you?" She asked.

I turned away slightly so she wouldn't see me blush.

"She said something about Cass, called him Cassius. She said we should ignore Beghad and go and find him and get him back from the Massa."

"Jack, we don't even know where they took him!" Aly protested. "It's not safe, even Torquin says so."

We sat in silence after that, Aly watching people dash across the field, myself deep in thought. If Marco was with us he would agree with me, I thought. I didn't know if I wanted his opinion though, after what had happened with the Massa.

Aly suddenly stood up.

"Okay, here's the plan," she started. "We'll prepare our stuff just in case we leave, but we'll decide tomorrow if we actually go or not, okay?"

I thought about it for a moment before standing up myself.

"Sure," I agreed. After all, a 'maybe' was better than a 'no.'


	3. Time To Leave

Chapter Three:

I woke up that morning feeling a bit dizzy, but my head soon cleared.

I glanced around my room tiredly and spotted a small backpack in the corner by my closet.

Oh yeah, I thought to myself. This is the day Aly and I are going to find Cass. Hopefully.

We still needed to decide if we were going to go, but I had no problem believing that I could convince Aly. I was sure she wanted to find him just as much as I did.

I quickly went through the contents of my bag just to confirm that I hadn't forgotten anything.

Shirt, jeans, hat, underwear, socks, broken mirror, extra pair of shoes, Cass's shirt…

Wait, I forgot my toothbrush.

I rushed into the bathroom just as Aly flung open the door to my room.

"Jack?" She said timidly. "I think we should go now. Like, right now."

I stuck my head out of the bathroom.

"Really?" I asked, almost disbelieving.

Aly nodded. "Bhegad and Torquin are both still sleeping, I checked."

I understood what she meant. She had hacked into the security cameras and spied on them.

"What about Fiddle and Nirvana and the others?" I asked as I threw my toothbrush and some toothpaste into my bag. "Is Conan asleep too?"

Aly bit her lip. "Conan's sleeping, but I don't know about anyone else. There weren't cameras in their rooms."

As I threw on my backpack I noticed for the first time that Aly didn't have hers.

"Hey, Aly. Where's your backpack?" I asked.

Aly smiled, the first time I'd seen her smile since Cass was taken by the Massa.

"Way ahead of you. I already dropped it off at the helicopter. Come on, I'm driving."

I stared at her as she disappeared into the hall. She was seriously crazy if she thought she could drive that thing, but I didn't really have a better plan. Besides, it couldn't be much worse than Torquin's piloting, right?


	4. Eating In Egypt

Chapter Four:

Wrong.

Aly may be the best hacker this world has seen, but she is nowhere near the best pilot. I must have lost my lunch four times before we landed in Egypt. I was definitely going back to the KI in a different vehicle, that was for sure.

Once the dizziness stopped we went to grab a bit of food. Everything I ate on the plane was long gone, and I was pretty hungry again.

Luckily Aly had thought ahead and brought some money because we would be pretty unhappy without it.

As we chowed down Aly traced a pencil over a path on a map she took from a tourist stand.

"The pyramid is here… and we're about… around here," Aly said between bites.

I peered across our table at the map. It didn't look like we were too far away, but we definitely couldn't walk there. I didn't feel up to riding in a jeep or tourist bus after the awful trip over, but if it was for Cass… well, I didn't really have a choice then, did I? We needed to find him.

"Any chance the KI are following us?" I asked Aly, trying to act nonchalant despite being a bit nervous. We didn't want to be brought back to the institute before we could find Cass.

Aly frowned. "I doubt they know we're missing yet, and even if they did it would be a while before they could get here."

"But… the trackers–"

"We can't disable them. No iridium."

We sat in silence for a moment.

"Hey, aren't there other elements that can block the signal? You said something like that to Fiddle I think."

"All the other elements are even rarer than iridium, and iridium is pretty rare, Jack." Aly sighed and ran her fingers through her pink hair. I noticed it sparkle in the sunlight.

We ate the rest of our food in silence, avoiding each other's gazes.


	5. The Taxi Driver

Trying to find a driver who spoke more than a few words in English was proving to be difficult even with Aly's foreign language guide. I kind of wished we had Daria with us, but I felt too bad about leaving her in Babylon, so I didn't think about her too much. It was Marco and the Massarene's fault that she was gone. I would punch them if I could, but they would easily beat me up. I wasn't as strong as Marco.

Aly held her thumb up as a taxi drove by, and like the others it stopped before us.

"Sorry, just a minute…" Aly told the driver, flipping through her language guide.

"It's alright, I speak English." The driver told her. She was wearing a heavy coat and had a scarf around her face, which I thought was odd until a cool breeze from inside the car hit me. It must have been at least below 35 degrees in there!

"Oh!" Aly said in surprise. "Uh, I have forty dollars," she said, taking it out of her wallet. "I need you to take us as close to the pyramid of Giza as you can."

"Done." The driver said, leaning out the window to grab Aly's money. "Climb aboard."

Aly pulled the door open and jumped in, moving over to the middle seat.

No sooner had I got in and closed the door and we were off. I had no how old this car was (and trust me, it looked old), but it had the fastest acceleration I had ever seen!

I shared a glance with Aly, who was gripping the back of the seats in front of her so tightly that her knuckles were white.

"So." The woman said in a matter-of-fact way. "Is there any particular reason you're visiting the pyramids?" She asked.

I caught her eye in the mirror and it twinkled in a familiar way.

"Perhaps your parents are archeologists working there today." She said in a strange way, almost as if she already knew why we were here.

Then I gasped.

"Are you—" I started.

The woman put a finger up to her mouth but said nothing.

"We're just visiting… a friend. A family friend." Aly lied.

Aly didn't realize who was driving us, but I did. It was the old lady from the Karai Institute, and she was following us.


End file.
